Nurse sentenced to life in prison for fatally injecting victims

A Canadian nurse has been given a life prison sentence for killing eight elderly patients in long-term care facilities by injecting them with deadly amounts of insulin.

Elizabeth Wettlaufer pleaded guilty to killing five women and three men in both Canada and England. Those victims were all over the age of 74, and Wettlaufer admitted that she injected them with insulin for no medical reason.

Six other people were seriously injured by the injections.

CBC reported that she apologised to her victims’ families for the killings, which took place between 2007 and 2014.

In court last month, Wettlaufer said she had felt angry about her career and her life’s responsibilities, according to The Associated Press. The rage would build until she felt an “urge to kill,” prosecutors said, and it would subside only after she did so.

Nursing home in the Ontario town of Woodstock where Wettlaufer worked. Image: Getty

She told the court that she was not under the influence of drugs and alcohol when performing the injections.

“I just had a sense after my marriage broke up that God was going to use me for something,” Wettlaufer, who began working as a nurse in 1995, said in a videotaped confession with the police. “After a while, I started to really wonder, after some of the murders, if it was God or if it was the Devil fooling me.”